


Pinecones and Coals

by Kittyknowsthings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Abuse, Fergus MacLeod's A+ parenting, Gen, Juggling, Neglect, Rowena MacLeod's A+ parenting, Torture, emotional child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 10:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittyknowsthings/pseuds/Kittyknowsthings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fergus, MacLeod, Crowley. The boy, the man, the demon. All of them have one thing in common – Juggling. <br/>An origin story of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pinecones and Coals

**Author's Note:**

> I took the line “I was an attractive child. I could juggle. I was worth five pigs at least!” and ran with it.

Fergus had loved to juggle.

First because it had earned him rare praise from his mother when he had picked it up, and he was sure if he could just get good enough, she would praise him again. He practiced with pinecones, back then.

When he mastered the fourth cone, she for sure would give him a smile. 

When he would manage to throw them in complicated patterns, she would never try to sell him again. 

When he managed to juggle the pinecone, the acorn and the apple all at once, then, for sure she would tell him she was proud.

The praise never came. 

Later, when he was the Macleod boy because no one but him remembered his name, and he was still too scrawny to find work, the concentration required to keep the cones in the air distracted him from the hunger pangs, gave him something to do while pleasantly thinking of nothing, especially not the witch's “Be back in a flash”, while also earning him more money than begging alone would have done. He even scrounged together enough coins to get real balls made. They were a little uneven, but they were his. 

MacLeod was what he answered to – even his wife called him that – when juggling got him the occasional drink paid for, which was enough incentive to keep with it and add more and more balls.

He tried to teach Gavin, once, when he was particularly drunk, collecting some pinecones for old times sake. Of course, nothing good came of it.

Juggling made for a useful way to find the occasional woman to bed, too, after his wife died – dropping all the balls and claiming it had been their beauty that had struck him so he could not keep up with them anymore. After having been laughed at once too often once his pants fell, he summoned a crossroads demon to rectify that. 

Being tortured in hell several years later of course he had no moment to spare to think about flying balls, until a few years after he had decided to come down from the rack and do some torturing himself.

He was taking a break from making a man scream - he didn't know his name, they were really not big on introductions down here, come to think of it, he didn't remember his own name, either – and the guy was pretty close to his breaking point, but it always took a while to get him there, and he decided to draw it out just a bit longer. 

He still had the piece of coal he had been reheating over and over to burn deeper and deeper holes into the man's flesh, so he started casually throwing it up and catching it again, keeping up the meaningless chatter that he had, about five torture cycles ago, figured out would keep his victim from dissociating too easily.

The weight in his hand, however, felt curiously familiar.

He trailed off, hardly noticing, and grabbed a second one, using one hand to keep them both in the air while the other casually drew circles on the man's skin, occasionally dipping into his wounds and delighting in his grunts of pain.

Somehow, still, the coals commandeered his attention, so he quickly collected more, ignoring the victim entirely (though inwardly delighting at how he was going cross-eyed trying to follow his movements and anticipate what he'd come up with next). He had a vague idea he had done this before, but he didn't know when, and he didn't particularly care. 

He added more and more coals and threw them in the air – well, if the gases down here counted as such – and started narrating his observations to the man on the rack.

How he soon found he preferred uneven numbers to even ones, even though he could do both, and that he could juggle nine pieces of coal but struggled at eleven. 

Then he went down in numbers – and chucked each unneeded piece of coal at his victim to be sure he was paying attention – to try more complex throwing patterns. He threw them out under his leg, spun around, alternated cascades with fountains and hummed a tune while doing it. 

When he was finally satisfied he caught all the coals and gave a bow.

“I hope you have enjoyed my performance.”

Then he resumed throwing the coals at the man, loudly awarding himself points based on how close he came to the wounds he had previously inflicted.

It was then that his victim gave a blood-curdling scream and soon found himself restored to mint condition. 

“Well,” Crowley drawled; “Back to work.”


End file.
